CARTHAGINIANS DRIVEN OUT of Spain.

297

Spanish struggle. It was not till Hasdrubal had spent the winter months in Gaul, had invaded Italy, and had fallen on the Metaurus, that Scipio ventured to advance into Bætica, and then, step by step, after a decisive victory at Elinga or Silpia, drove the Carthaginians into Gades, "their first and their last possession" in Spain.2 Nor was it till the year B.C. 205 that Mago, the youngest of the brood of Hamilcar, passed over into the Balearic Islands, leaving to Rome, or rather to two centuries of half-suppressed revolts against her cruel and treacherous rule, the empire which his family had founded and built up, and of which they had so long postponed the fall.3

1 Polyb. x. 39; Livy, xxvi. 51; xxvii. 18, 20, 36.

2 Polyb. xi. 20-24; Livy, xxviii. 2, 12-16. The whole history of the Roman campaigns in Spain is involved in obscurity, partly the result of our ignorance and the Roman ignorance of ancient Spanish geography, but much more of the gross exaggerations of the Roman writers, especially where the family of the Scipios is concerned. These falsifications reach their acme perhaps in the account of the two battles, or (it may be) in the double account of the one battle of Bæcula. In the first, Hasdrubal is said to have been defeated with a loss of twenty thousand men, and yet he went off unmolested from the field, and traversed the whole of Central Spain on his way to Italy, unpursued by his conqueror! (Livy, xxvii. 19). In the second, Hasdrubal, son of Gisco, is said to have been defeated at the head of an army of seventy-four thousand men ; but the place at which this portentous and (probably) imaginary battle took place is quite unknown, and receives four different names-Bæcula, and Silpia in Livy (xxviii. 12-13), Elinga in Polybius (xi. 20), and Karmon in Appian (Hisp. 25-27).

3 Livy, xxviii. 36, 37; Appian, Hisp. 37.

CHAPTER XVIII.

THE WAR IN AFRICA. BATTLE OF ZAMA.

(206-202 B.C.)

Scipio returns to Rome and is elected Consul-Receives leave to invade AfricaGoes to Sicily-His doings and difficulties there-Sails for Africa-Massinissa and Syphax-Roman ignorance of Carthage-The fall of Carthage, how far a matter of regret-Siege of Utica-Scipio's command prolongedHe burns the Carthaginian camps-Sophonisba-The Carthaginian peace party-Sons of Hamilcar recalled to Africa-Mago obeys the summonsHannibal obeys it-The Bruttian territory-The "Camp of Hannibal”— The Lacinian column-Joy in Italy-First operations of Hannibal in Africa -Battle of Zama--Dignity of Hannibal-Terms of peace-Results of the war-Alternative policies open to Rome.

On his return to Rome, towards the close of the year B.C. 206, Scipio enumerated to the Senate, which had been assembled for that purpose in the Temple of Bellona outside the walls, the long roll of the actions which he had fought, the towns which he had taken, and the cities which he had subdued. Not a Carthaginian, he proudly told them, was left alive in Spain. He expected to receive a triumph; and, truly, in view of his successes, if not of his intrinsic merits, he deserved it as few Roman generals had done before him. But the Senate, half envious and half distrustful of the young general, determined to abide by precedent where, as in this case, precedent fell in with their own inclinations, and refused an honour which had never yet been granted except to a regularly commissioned officer of the state. Scipio, who had conquered as a mere proconsul, could console himself only with the conquests he had yet in view, when it might be that there would be no such artificial obstacle to the

SCIPIO CHOSEN CONSUL.

299

reward which they merited. the Comitia, to which the people flocked as much to see as to vote for the conqueror of Spain, he was unanimously chosen consul-though he had not yet filled the office of prætor, and was still only thirty years of age-and with the purpose clearly understood, even if it was not expressed in words, that he should transfer the war to Africa.1

He had not long to wait; for at

But the fathers of the city were full of misgivings. They remembered Regulus; they reflected that Hannibal was still in Italy, that there might be life in the old lion yet, and that, even in his death-grapple, he might, like the blind and captive Samson, slay and scatter his foes once more as he had done scores of times in the heyday of his strength. The old Fabius, true to his policy to the end, advised Scipio to reckon with Hannibal and his few soldiers in Italy rather than attempt to draw him off to Africa, where he would have the whole power of Carthage at his back. But Scipio showed clearly enough that, if the Senate refused the leave he sought, he would seek it from the people; and if he failed to get it from them, he would still take it for himself. The Senate, therefore, were glad to save their dignity and to shift a portion of their responsibility from their own shoulders, by assigning the province of Sicily to the newly elected consul, at the same time giving him permission to cross thence into Africa, “if he should judge it to be advantageous to the State". They declined, however, to vote him a sufficient army, and would hardly even allow him to accept the services of those who came to him as volunteers. The army assigned to him consisted of but two legions, and those the two which had survived the defeat at Cannæ, and which had been kept on duty in Sicily, as in a kind of penal settlement, ever since. But the warlike nations of Italy supplied him with seven thousand trusty volunteers; and the Etruscans, those ancient mariners of the Italian waters, eagerly furnished him with the rough materials for a fleet. Once more the fairy tale of

1 Polyb. xi. 33, 7-8; Livy, xxviii. 38; Appian, Hisp. 38.

the First Punic War is repeated in honour of the favourite of the gods, and a growing wood was transformed in forty-five days into a fleet of ten quadriremes and twenty quinqueremes.1

With this meagre provision for what he was meditating, Scipio landed in his province. There he furnished three hundred of his army with horses which he had taken from the Sicilians; a delicate operation, but so adroitly managed, that we are asked to believe that the despoiled provincials, instead of resenting it as an injury, thanked him as for a benefit. Discharged veterans of the army of Marcellus came and enrolled themselves amongst his followers, and supplies of provisions came flowing in from all the corn-growing lands of Sicily. The ships which he knew to be seaworthy he. sent under the command of Lælius to devastate the African coast; those which were newly built he laid up for the winter in dry docks at Panormus, that their unseasoned timbers might warp or leak in a place where a warp or leak would not be fatal to them. He then went into winter quarters in the pleasant town-too pleasant his critics at Rome deemed it of Syracuse. But the inactivity which was thus forced or seemed to be forced upon him in his own province he turned to good account by the blow he managed to strike in the province of his colleague. He threw a small force across the Straits of Messana, and by an arrangement with a party within the town, he got possession of Locri, an important place near the southernmost point of Italy. Hannibal thus found himself deprived of his base of operations in Bruttium. But the gain was a doubtful one for the reputation alike of Scipio and of Rome. For the capture of the town was followed by a series of terrible atrocities which Scipio, if he did not actually authorise, took no measures either to prevent or adequately to punish, and which reflected seriously on the State in whose service the worst offenders were.2

1 Livy, xxviii. 40-45.

2 Livy, xxix. 1, 6-10; Appian, Hann. 55; Zonaras, ix. 11.

SCIPIO SAILS FOR AFRICA.

301

—a

The complaints of the unhappy Locrians fell like a spark upon the smouldering dislike and discontent with which a large party in the Senate regarded Scipio, and the question of his recall and punishment was openly debated. He was giving himself up-so the Senate, with old Fabius for their spokesman, indignantly exclaimed-to his own enjoyment at Syracuse, clothed in Greek garments, frequenting the Greek wrestling school, and a worse offence still-studying Greek literature, instead of enforcing ordinary discipline among his troops, or of carrying the war, as he had threatened or promised, into Africa.1 But some at least of these accusations proved to be ill-founded, and, early in B.C. 204, the armament which Scipio had collected in face of the lukewarmness or the opposition of the Senate sailed, amidst all the pomp and circumstance of war, from Lilybæum, that ancient stronghold of the Phoenician race.

Accounts differ as to the size of the armament. Some of our authorities-they can perhaps in this instance hardly be called authorities at all-place the number of men on board as low as twelve thousand, while others make it as high as thirty-six thousand. But if we take the higher, and perhaps the more likely estimate, we still cannot fail to observe how vastly inferior in numbers this expedition was to those which were again and again despatched against Carthage, or her maritime dependencies, in the course of the First Punic War. Even if the Senate had taken up the project warmly, as a more far-sighted body would probably have done, the waste of life and property occasioned by Hannibal's fourteen years' war in Italy must have made any armament which they were able to raise look small in comparison with that of Regulus; and we are surprised to find that the Carthaginians, who still claimed, in a measure, the empire of the seas, who knew what an invasion of Africa meant, and who had long seen that it was coming, yet offered no opposition by their fleet to Scipio's approach.

1 Livy, xxix. 16-20.